local history: oral history

The Organized Women Voters of Arlington was founded in 1923, just three years after the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution extended the right to vote to women.

A decidedly non-partisan organization, the OWV was unique in its distinct attention to matters facing the County. In an interview with the Northern Virginia Sun in 1958, then-president Ms. Woolley stated she believed “that the Organized Women Voters of Arlington is the only women voters’ group in the United States that is concerned solely with matters of local interest.”

While the OWV’s objective was to “collect and disseminate political and civic information,” it also served an important role as a space for the improvement of women’s social position within the county. Many prominent female leaders from Arlington, including county board members and former state senator Mary Margaret Whipple, have been a part of this significant organization.

In an oral history recorded in 1983, former OWV President Mrs. Sue Renfro remembered a time early on in the organization’s history when the two functions of education and political support intersected:

“At the first meeting there was a Sheriff Fields that came to speak to the ladies since they were having the vote. And he promised them that he would do something for them, so they asked him would he be willing to make an appointment [appoint a woman, and he replied] “Well, yes, under the circumstances.”

So then they had the election. Sheriff Fields won, and he just seemed to forget about appointing a lady. And the ladies decided that they should go and inspect the jail.

So they made several trips to inspect the jail, and finally it was reported that the sheriff looked up one day and saw the committee coming again to inspect the jail and decided that he might just appoint one of them, and he appointed Mrs. Pauline Duncan.

… She was the first deputy woman sheriff in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

In the photo above, attendees gather at the OWV’s 31st birthday luncheon in 1954.

These were high-profile events for the organization, and every year the group named a “Woman of the Year” from Arlington County.In 1938, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was an honored guest. Today, the Organized Women Voters still meets on the 4th Tuesday of every month from September through May at Essy’s Carriage House, to hear from candidates and county representatives.

Thank you to current president Nancy Renfro for the information regarding the organization’s current activities.

Learn More from the Center for Local History at the Central Library.

You can request to view materials in person from Record Group 17 – Records of The Organized Women Voters of Arlington County – or read the full interview excerpted above with Sue Renfro and Lillian Simms, cataloged as VA 975.5295 A7243oh ser.3 no.215.

On June 18, 2015, educator and Arlington native and civic leader Alfred O. Taylor discussed his book on the local and national contributions of residents from Arlington’s oldest African American community.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9xTOiiImSs[/youtube]

Dr. Taylor has served on many boards and in many organizations, but his biggest personal joy is seeing the Nauck community as a viable link to the history, growth, and success of Arlington. He feels that the traditional ways of a culture can only survive if people value, learn and pass on these cultural experiences to future generations, and it is his hope that the stories that he relates in his book will inspire them to do just that.

Alfred O. Taylor has a B.S. degree in Vocational Education, an M.A. degree in Administration and Supervision of Adult Education and his Ed.D in Administration of Higher Education. He served in key administrative positions at the University of the District of Columbia and after his retirement was a substitute teacher with Arlington Public Schools.

Years from now, new generations will be grateful for today’s Center for Local History at Arlington Public Library

Arlington Television captures the long-term value of an official County archive as it helps preserve the story of Joan Mulholland, the fearless civil rights activist who fought segregation from Lee Highway to the Deep South before raising a family and teaching for decades back home in Arlington. This video won the 2014 Best of Show Award from the Library Leadership & Management Association.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU9SYDBP9D4[/youtube]

An extensive oral history with Mulholland, available from the Center, represents just one “Arlington story” in a vast collection of memories and artifacts.

As a “footnote” to those stories and the piece above, Center manager Judith Knudsen received the 2014 lifetime achievement award from the Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region organization.

Judy and the Center’s work speak for themselves. And because of that, so do so many voices of Arlington’s past.

Learn more about the Center for Local History at the Arlington Public Library.

A Memory of German Prisoners of War in Arlington, Virginia

The following is an excerpt from an oral history with Walter R. De Groot, from the Center for Local History’s oral history collection.

In reply to a question regarding POWs in Arlington during WWII:

INTERVIEWER: Where did they stay?

NARRATOR: They came from Arlington Hall.

INTERVIEWER: That’s where they were incarcerated?

War Bonds rally at Clarendon Circle, circa 1943. Rector’s Florist, seen in the background, is now the location of Spider Kelly’s.

NARRATOR: Well, they had some in camps around but I believe they were held, incarcerated, at [the] Arlington Hall area. They had a place over there. In fact, that takes [me] to the story when I was stationed in Germany in ‘54.

We as kids we used to take things from home like maybe cigarettes or candy or stuff like that and we’d go over to this prison camp. We kids called it the “Cracker Jack Box.” These prisoners in their off time didn’t have anything better to do and they would cut up tobacco cans and tin cans and they’d bend them and twist them and make them like something, like a horse or a bird or a carving. They would carve things. So we never knew [what we’d get] if we threw [something] and it was sort of like, “okay it’s your turn.” I’d go over to the fence and one of the prisoners would sort of meander over that way and let’s say I had gotten a few cigarettes. I would throw them over the fence and then he would show up and he’d throw something over the fence. We never knew what we were going to get. So that’s why it was called the “Cracker Jack Box.”

Now when I was in Germany I met a man who it turns out he had been incarcerated there and he had a young wife. Many of the young German girls spoke English. Why I don’t know other than they got that much of an education as a second language. But I had mentioned [this] to this fellow. I said something and he said, “My wife does not speak English but I do.” And then we got talking about how did you learn to speak such good English and he said, “I was a prisoner in America.”

And I said, “Oh, where?”

He said, “Oh, you wouldn’t know this place. It was a little town called Arlington.”

I said, “Oh my goodness. You came from the”Cracker Jack Box”!

He said, “You know the town”!

INTERVIEWER: Isn’t that amazing? What a story.

Walter R. De Groot Oral History, Series 3, #193, Center for Local History Oral History Project

Arlington Remembers

In 2006, on the 5th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Center for Local History conducted a series of interviews with first responders and Arlingtonians about their experiences on Sept. 11, 2001, and the days that followed.